Eccentric detective Cordelia Cupp’s (Uzo Aduba) denouement in Netflix’s newest Shondaland production The Residence is entirely dramatic but gives us a satisfying conclusion to the hilarious whodunit. Her trademark affinity for birding acting as her guide, Detective Cupp sifts through a party of potential backstabbers to pinpoint just who among the White House staff was responsible for the death of Chief Usher A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito). Even for the great detective herself, pinning this killer was no simple task. But despite there being no question as to the person at the end of her final pointed finger, we wouldn’t blame you if you missed some details in Ms. Cupp’s explanation of who did what when, and how. Don’t worry – allow us to lay out the timeline of exactly what happened the night of the fateful Australian State Dinner.

Who Are Cordelia Cupp’s Final Suspects in ‘The Residence’?

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After taking a pleasant hiatus in the wilderness to spot her “nemesis bird,” the Giant Antpitta, due to her most trusted Chief of Police Larry Dokes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) closing the Wynter case as a suicide, Cordelia Cupp returns to the reopened investigation to walk through the events leading up to Wynter’s death with a select group of White House staff. Still unsure of who it was to do the deed herself, she closes off her options at President Perry Morgan (Paul Fitzgerald) and First Gentleman Elliott Morgan (Barrett Foa), the president’s scruffy brother Tripp Morgan (Jason Lee), deputy usher Jasmine Haney (Susan Kelechi Watson), ornery executive chef Marvella (Mary Wiseman), equally ornery Swiss-German pastry chef Didier Gotthard (Bronson Pinchot), enthusiastic butler Sheila Cannon (Edwina Findley), social secretary Lilly Schumacher (Molly Griggs), notoriously unproblematic housekeeper Elsyie Chayle (Julieth Restrepo), exasperated engineer Bruce Geller (Mel Rodriguez), “Third Man” Patrick Doumbe (Timothy Hornor), and everyone’s favorite pain in the neck, Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino).

Just before beginning the grand tour, Detective Cupp tells her annoyingly assigned number two, FBI Special Agent Edwin Park (Randall Park), to watch for “the blink.” As the mockingbird suddenly flashes its wings to identify its insect prey, she explains, the person to flinch the strongest after Cordelia’s dramatics would be the person they’re looking for.

Who Killed A.B. Wynter in ‘The Residence’?

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Handfuls of easy suspects – sorry, “interesting people” – some tragic stories, and a few acts of passion later, Agent Park calls “blink” at one performance in particular. Detective Cupp finally decides that Social Secretary Lilly Schumacher killed Chief Usher A.B. Wynter. A.B. had been keeping a record of the money Lilly was stealing for her projects, as well as the various criminal statutes and ethical codes that she had violated throughout her White House career. A.B. threatened to expose her on the night of the dinner, which is when she ripped a page from his journal containing those records to snatch it from him. The page she’d torn from him just so happened to come off as a suicide note on its own, and the revelation became clear; if A.B. went away, then all of Lilly’s worries would disappear, with the bonus opportunity to redecorate the entire place with no one standing in her way. With a fresh motive in mind, Lilly plotted to murder A.B. Wynter by staging it as a suicide.

How Did Lilly Schumacher Pull Off Her White House Murder in ‘The Residence’?

In classic villain fashion, Lilly set up a meeting with A.B. under the pretense that she would apologize for any upset from earlier and make amends over a drink. Already leading the “Conscious Landscaping” initiative of the White House, Lilly easily located some paraquat, a toxic herbicide, which she then poured into a nearby cup-like vase after the original glass that she brought to pour it in had broken. Using her darn good impression of First Gentleman Elliott, she called the Secret Service to clear the second floor for their meeting. While she waited in the Family Living Room for sweet Elsyie to exit from her heated conversation with A.B. about a lie on her résumé, she poured two proper Scotches – one dosed with paraquat – stashing away the vase from the shed. Once Elsyie left, Lilly entered the Yellow Oval Room with two drinks and returned the “suicide note” to him, which he then put in his coat pocket. A.B. sipped his Scotch, realized what it was, and poured the rest into some nearby roses, leaving a desperate Lilly to chuck a vase at him (and miss), then fatally bludgeon the poor Chief Usher with a massive clock sitting on the mantel. She stashed the murder weapon in a secret passageway between the Blue and Yellow Oval rooms, slipped through the Treaty Room and down the Grand Staircase, and rejoined the dinner unnoticed.

Within seconds of each other, Bruce the engineer (who was already on sour terms with A.B. from the start) and a suddenly distraught Elsyie both encountered the dead Chief Usher in the Yellow Oval Room. Having seen one another around the scene, however, both of them were left with the impression that the other did it. Bruce swiftly cleaned up the mess to protect his beloved Elsyie, which meant carrying the body upstairs to the discrete, supposedly-under-renovation Room 301 – although he briefly dropped the body off in the Lincoln Bedroom to make things more convenient by the time he’d brought the body upstairs. Meanwhile, increasingly paranoid about someone stumbling upon her stashed clock, but also confused at the lack of talk of any dead bodies for some time, Lilly returned to the Yellow Oval Room to find A.B. Wynter missing and Bruce picking up the remains of the scene, claiming to be looking for leaks from Tripp Morgan’s room.

Tripp woke up in Room 301 from a bender after feeling left out from the Australian State Dinner, and realized A.B. was lying dead next to him. So he dragged the body to the Game Room in a panic. But finding the note in A.B.’s pocket, Tripp tried to continue a suicide scene to detach himself from any speculation down the line. He slit A.B.’s wrists with one of Chef Gotthard’s special knives from his office next door, successfully leading to the initial suspicions against the pastry chef. With Detective Cupp bringing the investigation from the third floor down to the second floor, Lilly began to get fidgety but soon could relax once Cordelia had left, and the case had been closed. But to secure her own peace of mind and to ensure that no one would ever find the incriminating hidden clock, Lilly (once again posing as Elliott) called Deputy Usher Ms. Haney and ordered that the passageway harboring the murder weapon be sealed. Then, to truly cover her tracks (but probably also for the fun of it), she did a bit more wildly overt redecorating in a series of rooms.

Why Did Lilly Schumacher Kill A.B. Wynter in ‘The Residence’?

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Lilly ultimately did it because she straight-up hated the White House as a concept, and she hated everyone who worked and lived in it just by association. A.B. Wynter was an ambassador for everything the White House and its long-standing traditions represent, and he loved and cared for his family of staff in his way. Lilly simply wasn’t a fan. Instead, she wanted to reinvent that “museum” of a building by stealing from the White House itself to pay for her many reinvention projects. But Wynter had become her most stubborn roadblock. Ironically, it was the well-intended miscommunications and regrettable behavior of the rest of the White House staff that kept Lilly afloat in her schemes for as long as they did. As much as she despised her coworkers, she might have gotten away with murder thanks to them – if only it weren’t for the best birding detective in the land.